Hit the Track! Sounds From the Fertile Crescent

ABOUT THE SERIES:

The American Cinematheque invites you on a melodic odyssey exploring the sounds heard along the Fertile Crescent, a geographical region spanning across parts of Western Asia and North Africa. Recognized as the birthplace of agricultural practice, the Fertile Crescent is home to distinct cultures, each of whose vibrant passion for music enlivens the communal spaces surrounding this ancient land, celebrated for nurturing life. For so many around the world, music is a means of survival as much as it is a form of personal expression. It can be used by artists to express political discontent, such as in REBEL, SLINGSHOT HIP HOP, ELECTRO CHAABI and SIRENS; embraced by a distressed mother and her oblivious son who bond through a love of karaoke, like in HIT THE ROAD; or presented as a symbol for the deep connection musicians inherently share with their homeland, as seen in HALF MOON. From cinema’s unique capacity to synchronize stories involving the vitality of music with the land they are linked to and the people they derive from, emerges one of humanity’s most effective means of understanding others.